Welsh English, Anglo-Welsh, or Wenglish (see below) refer to the dialects of English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly modified by Welsh grammar and nouns, and contain a number of unique words. In addition to the distinctive words and grammar, there is a variety of accents found across Wales. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article is about the country. ... The Welsh (Cymry) are an ethnic group or nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language, which is a Celtic language. ... Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a part of speech which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. ... In linguistics, an accent is a pronunciation characteristic of a particular group of people relative to another group. ...

John Edwards has written and spoken entertainingly about a specific form of Welsh English — that found in the south-east area of Wales — as Wenglish. Some people, generally outside Wales, use the same word to refer to any form of English spoken in Wales.

Pronunciation and Peculiarities

Some of the features of Welsh English are

• Distinctive pitch differences giving a "sing-song" effect.
• Lengthening of all vowels is common in strong valleys accents.
• Pronouncing a short 'i' as 'eh' e.g. edit would become 'ed-et' and benefit would be 'benefet'
• A tendency towards using an alveolar trill /r/ (the 'rolled r') in place of an approximant /ɹ/ (the 'normal English r').
• Yod-dropping does not occur after any consonant, so rude and rood, threw and through, chews and choose, chute and shoot, for example, are distinct.
• Sometimes adding the word "like" to the end of a sentence for emphasis, or using it as a stop-gaps.

The South Wales Valleys are a number of industrialised valleys in South Wales. ... The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages (such as Russian, Spanish, Armenian, and Polish). ... // H-cluster reductions The h-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English involving consonant clusters beginning with /h/ that have lost the /h/ in certain dialects. ...

Influence of the Welsh language

As well as straightforward borrowings of words from the Welsh language (cwtsh, brawd), grammar from the language has crept into English spoken in Wales. Placing something at the start of a sentence emphasises it: "furious, she was". Periphrasis and auxiliary verbs are used in spoken Welsh, resulting in the English: "He does go there", "I do do it", particularly in the so-called Wenglish accent. Welsh redirects here, and this article describes the Welsh language. ... Periphrasis, like its Latin counterpart circumlocution, is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words. ...

There is also evidence of the misappropriation into English sentence forms of Welsh verbs. The Welsh verb dysgu (meaning both to learn and to teach) is mistranslated in the common Wenglish form, "He learned me to drive," in place of the correct English usage, "He taught me to drive," although the reverse error is not usually heard.

Regional accents within Wales

There is a very wide range of regional accents within Wales.

The sing-song Welsh accent familiar to many English people is generally associated with South Wales. Accents from South Wales can be heard from the actors Richard Burton and (to a lesser extent) Anthony Hopkins, or on recordings of Dylan Thomas. Swansea accents are prominent in the film Twin Town. The popular Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones also has a Swansea accent. The singers Shirley Bassey and Charlotte Church, meanwhile, are from Cardiff. The accent of Newport is also distinctive, quite different from that of Cardiff just a few miles down the road. Approximate extent of South Wales South Wales (Welsh: ) is an area of Wales bordered by England and the Bristol Channel to the east and south, and Mid Wales and West Wales to the north and west. ... Richard Burton CBE (November 10, 1925 – August 5, 1984) was a Welsh actor. ... Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE (IPA: ) (born 31 December 1937) is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning Welsh-born film, stage and television actor. ... Dylan Marlais Thomas, (October 27, 1914 – November 9, 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer. ... Swansea (Welsh: , mouth of the Tawe) is a city in Wales and a Welsh County. ... This article is about partnerships between towns distant from each other; see Twin cities for the different concept of physically neighbouring cities. ... Catherine Zeta-Jones (born 25 September 1969) is an Academy Award-winning Welsh actress. ... Dame Shirley Bassey Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born January 8, 1937), is a Welsh singer, perhaps best-known for performing the theme songs to the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979). ... Charlotte Church (born Charlotte Maria Reed on February 21, 1986) is a Welsh pop singer who rose to international fame in childhood as a popular classical singer. ... Cardiff (English:  Welsh: ) is the capital of Wales and its largest city. ... For other uses, see Newport (disambiguation). ...

The accents of North Wales are markedly different. In North West Wales the accent is less sing-song, with a more consistently high-pitched voice and the vowels pressed to the back of the throat. The "R" sound is rolled extensively and the dark L is used at the beginning or middle of words, for example in "lose", "bloke", and "valley". The sound IPA: [z] is often pronounced unvoiced (the sound does not exist in Welsh), so "lose" is pronounced the same as "loose". Approximate extent of North Wales North Wales (known in some archaic texts as Northgalis) is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales, bordered to the south by Mid Wales. ... A dark l is a common way of referring to a velarised alveolar lateral approximant. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

In North East Wales, the accent can sound like that of Cheshire or Staffordshire. Scouse-like Liverpool accents are used around Holywell, Queensferry and Flint. Around Wrexham, accents are similar to Scouse and younger people in particular have begun to use more Scouse-like vocabulary, such as "la","lyd" and "kid." To the ears of an Englishman a Wrexham accent can sound Scouse or just generally like Northern English. Similarly, in eastern parts of South East Wales, accents can have some characteristics of the English West Country accent. The Cheshire Plain - photo taken adjacent to Beeston Castle The Cheshire Plain - photo taken towards Merseyside The Cheshire Plain panorama - photo taken from Mid-Cheshire Ridge Cattle farming in the county Black-and-white timbered buildings on Nantwich High Street Cheshire (or, archaically, the County of Chester)[1] is a... Staffordshire (abbreviated Staffs) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... This article is about the city in England. ... Queensferry is a town in Flintshire, north Wales, lying on the River Dee near the border with England. ... Arms of Flint Town Council Flint (Welsh: ) is the fourth largest town in Flintshire, North Wales, lying on the estuary of the River Dee. ... For other uses, see Wrexham (disambiguation). ...

The accents of West-Wales, especially North Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, are gentler in nature than either the "valleys" or the Northern Welsh accents and are, by repute, one of the more beautiful British accents to listen to. In Pembrokeshire, the accent is highly anglicised, strange as it is so far from England. West Wales is the west area of Wales bordered by South Wales to the east. ... Carmarthenshire (Welsh: ) is a county in Wales. ... For other uses please see Ceredigion (disambiguation) Ceredigion is a county in Wales. ... The South Wales Valleys are a number of industrialised valleys in South Wales. ... Pembrokeshire (Welsh: Sir Benfro) is a county in the southwest of Wales in the United Kingdom. ... Anglicized refers to foreign words, often surnames, that are changed from a foreign language into English. ...

An online survey for the BBC ([1]) reported in January 2005 placed the Swansea accent in the bottom ten accents likely to help a career, although "Cardiff folk ranked only a few places higher".

It is worth noting that accents in Wales vary even within a relatively short distance. Within Swansea itself there is a strking difference between the West Swansea accent (which sounds relatively English) compared to the rest of Swansea. The Neath accent is different again. Within Carmarthenshire, there is a noticeable difference between the Carmarthen, Llanelli and Ammanford accents. Llanelli accents tend to be very broad, Ammanford accents tend to have a softer Welsher lilt, while towards Carmarthen there is more of a hint of anglicisation on the accent. Neath (Welsh: Castell-Nedd) is a town and community with a population of approximately 45,898, located on the river of the same name (Welsh: Afon Nedd) in the traditional county of Glamorgan, south Wales. ... Carmarthen (Welsh Caerfyrddin - caer fort + Myrddin Moridunum, Merlin (origin disputed)) is the county town of Carmarthenshire, Wales. ... Parish Church of St. ... Ammanford (Welsh: Rhydaman) is the fourth largest town in the county of Carmarthenshire, Wales with a population 5,299 according to the 2001 census. ...

Influence outside Wales

While English accents have affected Anglo-Welsh, it was by no means a one way traffic. In particular, Scouse and Brummie accents have both had extensive Anglo-Welsh input through immigration, although in the former case, the influence of Anglo-Irish is better known. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Brummie (sometimes Brummy) is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, UK, as well as being a general adjective used to denote a connection with the city, locally called Brum. ... Anglo-Irish was a term used historically to describe a ruling class inhabitants of Ireland who were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy[1], mostly belonging to the Anglican Church of Ireland or to a lesser extent one of the English dissenting churches, such as the Methodist church. ...

External links

• Talk Tidy:John Edwards, the inventor/populariser of the term "Wenglish" and his books and CDs on the matter.
• Some thoughts and notes on the English of south Wales : D Parry-Jones, National Library of Wales journal 1974 Winter, volume XVIII/4
• Samples of Welsh Dialect(s)/Accent(s)

References

• Welsh proud of 'unpopular' accent. Retrieved on June 30, 2005.